MONEY MONSTER C+
USA (98 mi) 2016 ‘Scope d: Jodie Foster
USA (98 mi) 2016 ‘Scope d: Jodie Foster
A dark film with timely ambitions of having something
relevant to say about the global financial crisis of 2008 and the inexplicable bailout
of Wall Street that actually caused the crisis, cynically suggesting the rich
get richer by fleecing the public with get rich schemes that require
manipulating the market, where there are winners and losers, but few questions
asked, even under the most dire circumstances.
At the same time, the film caters to our prisoner of the moment
fascination with the news, where only catastrophes get our attention, and then
only for a moment to see how it all plays out before moving our attention
elsewhere. The film may unintentionally
offer validation that we’re living in a police state, that the lives of the
poor are not only marginalized, but sacrificed on a regular basis in the
interests of protecting an elite class, whose own crimes are so willingly
overlooked. Featuring A-list Hollywood
actors and tabloid icons, not to mention perennial People’s Choice nominees
George Clooney and Julia Roberts, who first worked together in Soderbergh’s
OCEANS ELEVEN (2001), they come across as best friends both on and off the
screen, where Clooney plays Lee Gates, a smug TV host of his own show entitled Money Monster, complete with a musical
theme and dancing girls, with a supposed knowledge of all things Wall Street, handing
out stock tips, while Patty (Roberts) is the behind-the-scenes producer in the
booth. Their all-too ordinary lives get
upended by the presence of an armed intruder on the set, Jack O’Connell as Kyle
Budwell, an irate investor that lost $60,000, his entire life’s savings, who
decides to hold the host hostage, claiming he’s responsible, placing him in a
bomb-rigged suicide vest for insurance while holding the detonator in his hand. From that point on, events unravel in real
time, as viewers around the globe become fascinated with a live feed of the
entire experience. The question of
whether Jodie Foster can direct is answered by the sheer conventionality of the
film, which offers surprisingly few new ideas, lacking originality and a better
screenwriter. The product of a Hollywood
system in which she was raised as a child actress, Foster probably thought this
was a big story that would fill headlines, where there’s an urge to enlarge
everything and make it bigger than it is, as if that’s entertainment, while a
more carefully crafted film would break it down to smaller, more poignant
moments that actually matter, where we might delve under the surface for
intimate details of the character’s lives.
“I might be the one with a gun here, but I am not the
criminal,” explains Kyle to the cameras, reminding Gates that he was the one
who recommended a certain stock named IBIS as a sure thing, but yesterday the
stock plummeted, costing investors $800 million dollars, where the company’s
vague explanation was the action occurred inexplicably due to a computer
glitch. Unable to grasp what that even
means, but threatening to blow them all up unless they provide real answers, there
is a side story following executives at IBIS, who are perplexed by the sudden
disappearance of their CEO Walt Canby (Dominic West), who left unexpectedly for
Geneva, Switzerland and is supposedly in the air on his executive jet, though
he was scheduled to be a guest on the show.
Instead, they send a PR talking head, Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe), who
was hooked up to a TV monitor, but makes a mad dash back to the office when she
sees what transpires, where she and another male executive are simply befuddled
about what to do other than stall until their CEO surfaces. It’s interesting that the film takes great
interest in exposing the layout of the television studio from all angles, how
it looks from the booth, hearing Patty’s specific instructions to each of them,
calling up certain monitors for the live shot, following the camera operators doing
their jobs, yet this careful examination gets greater scrutiny than any of the
characters, where instead we get neverending wisecracks from everyone involved,
where the routine of the job has simply allowed them to tune out anything
serious happening in their lives. As a
result, the film pales considerably from works it obviously drew inspiration
from, such as Sidney Lumet’s Dog
Day Afternoon (1975) and Network
(1976), iconic 70’s thrillers that doubled as absurdly humorous yet incisive
cultural critiques. Unfortunately, there’s
an absence of humor and insight here, where small talk is allowed to take its
place, ending up with the kind of dialogue that’s easily forgettable. What is remarkable is that no one takes the
computer glitch remark seriously, where instead this comes across as utter
fiction, yet the news team goes to great lengths to identify the Korean computer
programmer that designed the algorithm allegedly used by the company, whose
explanation is that only a “human hand” could have caused the system to act the
way it did.
Meanwhile, even as the set is under siege, with Gates’ life
repeatedly threatened by an increasingly unstable hijacker whose righteous
anger is desperate to begin with, he seems to run out of options, so Gates,
with Patty whispering instructions to him through an earpiece, is forced to try
to find this kid some answers, turning him into something of a sympathetic
figure, going into full investigative journalism mode in order to scour the
inside operations of IBIS, while simultaneously the New York City police surround
the set, install a few carefully placed snipers in the upper regions of the
rafters, while they examine the possibility of shooting out the electric
detonator receiver located on the suicide vest just above the kidney region, questioning
whether Gates would survive a shot. All
bets are off, however, when the police find Kyle’s pregnant girlfriend (Emily
Meade), putting her on a monitor with a live feed, but instead of sympathizing
with Kyle, she rails against him in a lengthy tirade telling him what an idiot
and complete loser he is before the police finally cut the feed. This seems to sap all the life out of Kyle, turning
him into a broken mess, where Gates has to come to his rescue. As Diane begins to doubt the truthfulness of
her boss, realizing he was never in Switzerland, she begins to feed inside information
exclusively to Patty, which is then fed to Gates on the air. Initially skeptical, Patty is forced to
reassure Diane, “We don’t do gotcha journalism here, Diane—we don’t do journalism,
period.” It turns out Canby has returned
to New York and intends to speak to the press at Federal Hall nearby, the site
of the nation’s first capitol. Unbelievably,
Gates encourages Kyle, along with loyal cameraman Lenny (Lenny Venito) to march
down the streets of New York, like a scene out of Birdman
or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), surrounded by a legion of
cops with guns and rifles aimed straight at them, with Kyle continually
blocking the vest transmitter, receiving hoots and catcalls from the mobs of
bystanders on the street as they make their way to Federal Hall to confront
Walt Canby. Preposterous as it is, there
is little to no suspense, largely due to the unimaginative way it’s filmed,
losing its way in an attempt to tie up loose ends and make it all perfectly
understandable, while the case against global capitalism simply fizzles into
thin air. Unfortunately, unlike the work
of a professional investigative journalism team from a reputable news
organization, like what was uncovered in Spotlight
(2015), Foster resorts to manipulation tactics when the damning evidence is
instead provided by a couple of drunken hackers in Iceland playing video games,
who instead of proving the system is rigged, or making the case that
corporations conspire to manipulate the markets by duping investors, which
would be boring and way too complicated, can instead only provide evidence that
Canby is lying to cover up his real intent, where his response to the cameras
is simply, “What’s wrong with making a profit?” Perhaps unsurprisingly, this film premiered at
the Cannes Film Festival, and while hardly an exposé equivalent to the tobacco
industry’s decades-long history of lies and cover-ups that resulted in Michael
Mann’s THE INSIDER (1999), the real conspiracy would be finding viewers who are
stupid enough to place their financial fortunes in the hands of a TV Quiz Show host
dressed in gold lamé pants, a glitter top hat, and surrounded by Fly Girls.
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